(Mis)Measuring Value Change: A Brief Postscript

One aspect of the multifaceted controversy on value change in advanced industrial societies concerns the measurement of values. Analyses of 1976–86 Euro-Barometer data have indicated that responses to the four-item materialist-postmaterialist values index are very sensitive to current economic conditions, especially inflation and unemployment rates and, hence, much of the recorded increase in postmaterialism in eight Western European countries since the mid-1970s is artifactual. Although it has been claimed these findings disappear if more recent data are considered, time series analyses reveal that responses to the values measure are strongly affected by prevailing economic conditions throughout the entire 1976–92 period. These aggregate-level findings are buttressed by individual-level analyses of 1989 Euro-Barometer data.     

Research in Context: Measuring Value Change

Abramson and Inglehart find a significant trend toward postmaterialist values in Western Europe, which they argue is largely driven by the gradual processes of generational replacement. Clarke, Dutt, and Rapkin argue that this trend is a methodological artifact of the wording of Inglehart's four-item measure of materialist/ postmaterialist values. They claim that because this battery does not include a question about unemployment, in periods of high unemployment respondents tend to choose postmaterialist goals. The long-term trend toward postmaterialism in Western Europe, they argue, results from rising levels of unemployment during the past two decades. Abramson and Inglehart point out that increases in inflation have a short-term impact on decreasing postmaterialism, but maintain that the positive relationship between unemployment and postmaterialism is spurious. As this analysis shows, Clarke, Dutt, and Rapkin find a positive relationship between unemployment and postmaterialism by building a model that has little theoretical justification and that is not robust to changes in specification. As this analysis demonstrates, unemployment is actually linked with support for materialist goals, and the trend toward post-materialism is robust in the face of alternative time frames, models, and specifications. The weight of the evidence demonstrates that the long-term trend toward postmaterialism in Western Europe is driven by generational replacement.     

Political Partisanship and Welfare State Reform in Advanced Industrial Societies

In this article we evaluate two claims made in recent studies of the welfare states of advanced industrial societies: first, that welfare states have remained quite resilient in the face of demands for retrenchment; and second, that partisan politics have ceased to play a decisive role in their evolution. Addressing the first claim, we present analysis from a new data set on unemployment insurance and sickness benefit replacement rates for 18 countries for the years 1975–99. We find considerably more evidence of welfare retrenchment during the last two decades than do recent cross-national studies. Second, we examine the "end of partisanship" claim by estimating the effects of government partisanship on changes in income replacement rates in sickness and unemployment programs. Our results suggest that, contrary to claims that partisanship has little impact on welfare state commitments, traditional partisanship continues to have a considerable effect on welfare state entitlements in the era of retrenchment .     

Mobile Capital, Democratic Institutions, and the Public Economy in Advanced Industrial Societies

This article addresses the following questions. Is international capital mobility systematically related to reductions in the size of the public economy, as globalization theory suggests? Alternatively, do democratic institutions and processes shape the ways in which internationalization affects national policies? Specifically, I argue that the effects of capital mobility on the scope of the public economy should be conditioned by the institutional forms of societal interest representation and the formal organization of decision-making authority within the polity. Utilizing econometric analysis of 1964–1993 data from 16 nations, I find that international capital mobility has few direct effects on the scope of the public economy. However, configurations of democratic institutions fundamentally shape the domestic policy impacts of capital mobility. Where social corporatism and inclusive electoral institutions are strong and where decision-making authority within the polity is concentrated, international capital mobility is either unrelated to the scope of the public economy or positively associated with total public spending, social transfers, and public consumption. In institutional contexts of pluralist interest and exclusive electoral representation, and in polities where decision-making is dispersed, rises in capital mobility are systematically associated with rollbacks of the public sector.     

Direct Democracy,Educative Effects,and the (Mis)Measurement of Ballot Measure Awareness

Political Behavior - A century ago, Progressive reformers in the U.S. introduced the institutional innovations of direct democracy, claiming these reforms would cultivate better citizens. Two...     

Evaluating the News: (Mis)Perceptions of Objectivity and Credibility

Political Behavior - The introduction and popularity of politically biased news sources represents a significant historical shift in the media environment, with important unexplored consequences....     

Cutting Public Expenditures in Advanced Industrial Democracies: The Importance of Avoiding Blame

This article examines three conditions for cutting public expenditures across a sample of 16 advanced industrial democracies: intent, ability, and need during the 1970s and 1980s. Unlike spending increases, cuts require purposeful action. A first condition, therefore, for cutting expenditures is that leaders intend to curb spending. Surprisingly, the results indicate that leftist parties are considerably more effective at cutting expenditures than parties of the right. Indeed, leaders appear to have most latitude when a feared course of action is considered least likely. A second condition is that of ability. Institutions constrain and facilitate leadership. The degree to which decision-making must be shared within the executive both helps and hinders budget-cutting across exogenous conditions. While oversized coalitions may impede losses, they may also facilitate them by sharing responsibility for unpopular measures and thus reducing electoral repercussions. Indeed, both party and institutional results point to the centrality of avoiding blame in the loss‐inducing process. A third condition for cutting public expenditures involves need. While objective economic indicators are not irrelevant, the issue of need is largely politically defined.     

Buttery Guns and Welfare Hawks: The Politics of Defense Spending in Advanced Industrial Democracies

In this article, we present a new theory that, given the economic consequences of military spending, some governments may use military spending as a means of advancing their domestic non‐military objectives. Based on evidence that governments can use military spending as welfare policy in disguise, we argue that the role of ideology in shaping military spending is more complicated than simple left‐right politics. We also present a theory that strategic elites take advantage of opportunities presented by international events, leading us to expect governments that favor more hawkish foreign policy policies to use low‐level international conflicts as opportunities for increasing military spending. Using pooled time‐series data from 19 advanced democracies in the post–World War II period, we find that government ideology, measured as welfare and international positions, interacts with the international security environment to affect defense spending.     

发展观的语境及价值诉求

科学发展观是对联合国综合发展观的升华,是＂全面、协调、可持续发展＂的发展理论,其公平的价值追求、和谐的价值向度和终极价值目标是发展是否＂合理＂的标尺,深刻理解科学发展观的语境和价值诉求,抓住理论根本,才能让科学发展观＂理论掌握群众并变成物质力量＂。     

Explaining the Decline of Macro-corporatist Political Bargaining Structures in Advanced Capitalist Societies

A growing consensus among many observers of Western European politics has developed in recent years that, in certain countries, national level, consensus-based political bargaining arrangements involving representatives of organized capital, trade unions, and the state are giving way to more sectorally-based, conflictual forms of relations. These developments suggest an overall decline in the efficacy of national-level corporatist institutional structures in the liberal democracies of Western Europe. This article contends that neither of the two general theoretical approaches to the study of corporatism - the liberal model of the "neocorporatist state" (which fails to acknowledge the potential for serious system-threatening instability within corporatism) nor the Marxist model of corporatist "political structures" (which incorrectly predicts labor-generated corporatist instability due to inevitable rank-and-file discontent with the policy outputs of corporatist forms) - can account for this current wave of macro-corporatist instability and decline. In response to this theoretical impasse, this article develops a capitalist-centered explanation for the declining significance of corporatist forms. Business interests, it is maintained, may no longer be viewing corporatist arrangements as beneficial due to certain domestic structural economic changes and to transformations in the global capitalist system.     

中国工业体制的改革与发展（下）

三、工业行业协会成长与发展是工业体制的重要环节　　党的十一届三中全会以前 ,工业领域实行的是严格的计划经济体制 ,国有制工业一统天下 ,工业企业实行清一色的政企合一 ,按行政隶属关系进行行政管理 ,只有部门管理 ,没有行业管理和行业协会。改革开放以后 ,我国经济走上了全面改革开放的道路。为了适应经济体制改革和工业发展的需要 ,工业体制改革提上了日程。工业行业管理和工业行业协会是伴随着工业管理体制改革和政府职能转变而产生和发展的。其演变大体可以分成 2 0世纪 80年代、90年代两个不同阶段。1 979年至 2 0世纪整个 80年代…     

产业升级背景下大学生就业问题思考

受多种因素的影响,近年来我国大学生就业形势日益严峻。2008年有100多万学生尚未就业,2009年大学生的就业率也只有74％,2010年又将有630万大学生毕业。一个国家究竟需要多少大学生,这显然无法精确计算出来。从国际惯例看,一般工业化国家接受高等教育的比例是45％。     

WOLF'S MODEL: Government Failure and Public Sector Reform in Advanced Industrial Democracies

Many developed nations have embarked on public sector reform programs based on the New Public Management (NPM) paradigm. This article seeks to evaluate the efficacy of NPM reform strategies as a means of dealing with the problem of “government failure” in public sector hierarchies by examining these strategies through the analytical prism provided by Wolf's theory of nonmarket failure. Drawing on the New Zealand experience, we explore the potential for NPM reform initiatives to mitigate the problems of nonmarket supply. Moreover, we examine how “autonomous policy leadership” and “advocacy coalition networks” can overcome the various obstacles to the successful implementation of reform strategies delineated by Wolf under his “conditions of nonmarket demand”. The article then focusses on the efficacy of NPM in removing, or at least reducing, the various forms of government failure identified in Wolf's taxonomic catalogue of nonmarket failure. We conclude by assessing some of the likely tradeoffs involved in the application of NPM reform programs.     

劳动价值论:经济学语境中的现代性话语

对现代性进行理论探讨是现代西方思想运动的基本主题之一。亚当.斯密确立的劳动价值论,既从经济学层面对现代性的合法性进行了辩护,又从"历史深处"凸显了现代性的界限。马克思通过劳动价值论批判,把现代性视为自我否定、自我扬弃的过程,从而在经济学语境中完成了对"现代性"的实践批判和超越。     

地方院校专业设置与产业结构吻合度实证分析——以产业结构变革为背景

地方本科院校专业建设没有充分反映地方产业变革要求,导致学生就业压力和地方产业结构调整人才供给不足矛盾日益突出地表现出来。通过测度地方产业结构和地方本科院校专业设置的吻合度,可以定量地掌握地方本科院校专业设置与地方经济发展的差距,从而指导地方本科院校不断进行优化调整,促进学生就业压力和地方产业发展人力资源供给不足矛盾的解决。     

全球化背景下新政治文化运用价值分析

在全球化进程中,特里·N.克拉克适时提出新政治文化,其框架由三个总体理念展开,包括衰落的等级架构、资源的民主化以及变化中的结构条件,并将其扩展为七个核心要素,又通过详细论述具体的22个命题证明组织起来,共同支撑新政治文化庞大的理论架构。美、英、日等三国对于新政治文化的应用在一定程度上促进国家的发展和进步。我国在借鉴时需考虑的因素是:借鉴西方文化时必须紧密结合我国国情,始终坚持以中国特色社会主义事业为核心,主干永不偏移;在运用文化思想时以全球视域对待,做到大眼界、新高度;在全球化进程中坚持合作共赢的理念。对我国目前逐步实行治理现代化、国家新媒体平台建设和"一带一路"战略的启示是:国家治理现代化中的新政治文化理念不可或缺,国家新媒体平台的建设和发展更需要与时俱进,"一带一路"战略的推进需要文化共识与合作。     

Confidence in Institutions in Post-Communist Societies: The Case of the Baltic States

The transition from totalitarian to democratic rule in the Baltic states raises the question of conditions for regime legitimacy and stability. The article focuses on the level of confidence people have in institutions after change of regime. The confidence in political and social institutions is at a surprisingly low level. The data suggest that people have more confidence in institutions producing symbols than they have in policy-making and implementing institutions. There is also evidence to show that leaders are more trusted than institutions as such. A survey of the potential background variables shows that people with higher education have lower confidence in institutions than the less well educated. But low confidence in institutions does not necessarily spell gloomy prospects for procedural democratic development, as long as the elites do have some popular support and the capacity for consensual integration.     

Statebuilding in Divided Societies: The Reform of Dayton in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract

Drawing from the literature on conflict regulation and other plural society theories, this paper provides a framework of analysis to explore the dynamics involved in the external statebuilding process in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). The analysis is based on a three-level framework whereby patterns of conflict regulation are analyzed at the inter- and intra-ethnic levels, as well as what this article terms the ‘supra-national’ ethnic level, where interactions between domestic and external actors are considered. In order to explore these issues empirically, this paper examines the process of constitutional reform in BiH over the course of 2005–6, drawing from personal interviews. The paper concludes that, while the assistance provided by external actors has proven substantial, the neglect of intra-ethnic dynamics and other related considerations have often rendered external actors’ efforts at shaping the statebuilding process in BiH ineffective.     

Research Note: Libertarian-authoritarian Value Change in Britain, 1974–2001

This research note explores the mechanisms behind age differences and changes over time in one of the two major value dimensions in British politics, libertarian-authoritarianism. I show that the British electorate has become substantially more libertarian over the last 30 years, but that older people have remained more authoritarian than younger people over this period. Conventionally, due to the problem of the under-identification of models containing age, period and cohort variables, it is difficult to assess whether this indicates generational differences, and generational change, or not. This paper overcomes some of these problems however, by measuring social ageing factors, such as marriage, and using panel data to rigorously assess how individuals change due to these social ageing factors. I find little evidence of psychologists' claims that social ageing leads to increases in authoritarianism, and conclude that both age differences and changes over time are generational in nature.